A seventh-grade girl who was killed when a gunman sprayed bullets down her Newark street had just unwrapped a Kindle for Christmas and was thrilled about reading books so she could one day go to college.

Zainee Hailey, 13, was an A student who was taking out the trash with her little brother when she was caught in the gunfire at around 10 p.m. Wednesday.

Her brother, age 7, was spared, and mistook what he was hearing for fireworks, said one relative. But the girl’s parents knew better and rushed downstairs to find her slumped and dying in the building’s doorway.

Two other kids were also caught in the gunfire on Schley Street in the city’s South Ward.

Zainee Hailey, 13

Kasson Mormon, 15, was visiting pal Abdul “Scooter” Frazier, 13, who lives on the block. Kasson was killed in the barrage and Abdul was critically wounded.
There are no known suspects.

Zainee was “involved in the church, youth ministries and participates in the plays,” said her grandfather Michael Peterson.

“She was in great spirits,” after having dinner at his house, and left around 6 p.m., the grieving grandfather said of the quiet, well-spoken girl, who last Christmas had played the Virgin Mary in her church’s youth-ministry play.

Her gifts included a Kindle Fire HD, clothes, a gift certificate for $100, and a watch, he said.

“She wanted to read, and plus that was her first piece of electronics,” the grandfather said. “Her main focus, we were always talking about her going to college.”

“I was just sitting here wondering trying to put it all together. How? Why? Another senseless angel gone,” he said. ”It’s like a dream.”

Relatives of the two shot boys and witnesses gave conflicting accounts of whether they were targeted by the shooter, described as a young man in a ski mask.

“He can’t talk at all. But he’s responding,” said the wounded boy’s mother, Shaheedah Frazier, who also lives at the address but wasn’t home at the time of the shooting.

“When we say something to him, he blinks his eyes, so he can hear us talking.”

Her son Abdul was shot in the chest and is on a respirator.

“They were just boys being boys, sitting on the porch,” Frazier said. “They say some guy came up and started shooting at them. That’s all I know so far.”